I am not sure how related my issue is but for me it seems the biggest reason the game is unplayable is that when I start the game my poor core 2 duo immediately goes to 100% and stays there, really heating things up. It doesn't make sense to me that from before even getting to the main menu a 2.6 ghz dual core should be at 100 load. I'd checked drivers and restarted etc but the issue just seems to be the game causing this. Other people I've talked to with quad cores around 3.3-3.6ghz at the title screen are using around 40% cpu.
Anyone else with similar issue? Yea I know my processor is old but it was minimum for the game so I should at least be able to play it in some way ... honestly seems like the game thinks I have a quad core or something.
I too have a core 2 duo, a e6750 to be exact, and the same problem happens to me. After the movie you‘re in the ark and the game starts and stops every 3-4 seconds or so. I had just updated to the Catalyst 11.9 drivers expecting they’d be ‘optimized’ for the game, but definitely not. I downgraded to 11.8 and then actually got perhaps 2-3 fps. Tried unchecking “Enable surface format optimization” and OpenGL “Triple Buffering”. Also, no go.
I even overclocked my 2.6 to 3.2, and no FPS difference or change in the texture loading. Also went as far as dropping the resolution, *gasp*, to 800x600 and still unplayable. I don't know what you're using for a video card but I've got an HD6870 which should be enough to run this game.
After looking through the forums it looks like many of the problems are related to the OpenGL stack being outdated for ATI's CatalystControl suite. According to their twitter account @CatalystCreator, updated drivers should be available in a few hours,
that post was made 2 hours ago..